Madison had warned her.
Nonetheless Parker was now living with Alex, a recent Russian immigrant she’d met during the Q-and-A following an academic presentation of a Russian gangster movie. She was drawn to his old-world manners and his desire for …
Fiction
The Less Said
-1-
It was a simple pulley. Not weathered, maybe fixed-eye, with some plastic twine threaded through the sheave. It hung there from a bar, which had been bent in the middle by weight and poor planning. The bar was secured …
The Armed Letter Writers
* Winner of a 2018 Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing *
It all started with a letter, slapped smack in the middle of our street sign. It was Uncle Ermu who saw it, …
Ma’s Cactus
While I am tweezing the first of three cactus needles stung into my right shoulder, my teeth furiously biting into a small rolled-up towel I’ve put in my mouth, I feel more certain than ever that Ma’s expensively exotic plant …
Susu
You are coming from your friend’s. It is Sunday. The date is the 9th of August. You have spoken about the far and near, you have indeed nattered. Y’know it is unusual to converse with an age mate in Rukiga. …
The Birthmark
Their daughter is born healthy but a little underweight. Five pounds six ounces, the father proudly repeats in his emails and reports to relatives on the phone. On the second day, before they leave the hospital, the mother notices a …
Back from Paris
A journey punctuated by stinks. Crossing a street in Jackson Heights in Queens mother and son drifted from open-sewer smell at one corner to the reek of piled garbage at the next. All manner of mechanized traffic on slush begrimed …
Slo Girl, Jazzy, and Me
If you was to ask Slo Girl, she was to say that she discovered blue religion on a Saturday morning, when she landed flat on her back, ankles twined improper, under a sunny kinda someone; her first reaction upon landing …
A Butcher Fantasy
It is dark inside the cow. Space is limited; you can crouch or curl or squat on your haunches. My favorite position is fetal: chin down on my stomach, knees drawn up in a tight ball. I sleep like that …
Monkey
Like all good things this is chewed on. That’s her tongue in my cheek, curled up with my family and me. That’s her voice, those are her teeth biting my caution and wrists. She says we know what we’re doing, …
